Starting to harvest a fair amount now: spuds, cucumbers, peppers, garlic. The summer has been very dry, but we had a lot of rain a couple of weeks back which definitely helped. More notes on the photos.
The very first entry in my Garden Diary ! Very small beginnings as you can see.
Broad beans are still cropping very well, to the point where I think I need to harvest all of them very soon. Yates says to harvest up to November if they're planted in April, and they are getting rather big. We've given a fair amount away, but I think I'll freeze the rest.
We're getting a few strawberries now. They're very small - I don't know what you have to do to make them bigger. Very nice, though, and mostly untouched by others with the netting over them..
All the apples came off the braeburn (or whatever it is), maybe in a strong wind we had. Never mind. It'll give the tree a chance to bulk up for next year. The granny smith has a few on it, but I'll need to stake it up 'cos it's so spindly. The apricot is putting on a lot of foliage, no sign of fruit though.
Potatoes are racing away - we'll start to harvest them around Xmas, I think. The tomato plants next to them are going good, lots of flowers. I nipped out some laterals the other day, but I'm not sure if I should have done it earlier. Live and learn.
I've resown the carrots and onions and the carrots seem to be coming up. A few extra onions as well. The peas and carrots went in a few weeks ago and are mostly popping up - a bit hard to tell the peas from the oxalis, unfortunately. A bit of weeding to do there ...
Got a couple of feeds of worm rum out of the worm farm. Slowly ticking along.
Fed the rhubard up a month ago, and have had plenty from it, good for a few crumbles :-). It'll need splitting next season, and I need to find somewhere to put the new plants, maybe by the washing line if I whip that lavender out.
The dwarf beans are still very patchy - only 7 up. Might try planting some later in the summer.
Since we had lots of pumpkin seedlings form the compost, I transplanted some down the side of the house to see what they'd do (see photo), along with a few self-sown tomatoes. They've survived so far, so it will be interesting to see how they do with relatively little direct sun (maybe 3-4 hours a day).
The lemon tree has put on a surprising spurt of growth. Don't know why, maybe the warm winter. I'm not complaining :-) Also, I put a frame around the cherry tomatoes, so it'll be interesting to see what we get out of there.
Finally finished the big compost bin. No excuse for dumping green waste now!
Harvesting strawberries and potatoes now. Strawbs are doing really well, got a couple of punnets off yesterday and they've probably got a month to go. We'll extend the patch next year since they've been such a good crop and everyone likes them :-). Lots of potatoes too and the karaka (or whatever) taste really nice. That said, the potatoes haven't quite met my high expectations in terms of quantity, but the ground (even though it was full of chewed up tree) didn't have a lot of compost in it.
In the patch where the broad beans were, I've planted: leaks, parsnips, carrots, mesclun, rocket, basil, spring onions, coriander. The rocket, mesclun, carrots and onions are doing well (heaps of mesclun), the coriander less so, and hardly any of the rest. Not sure why - maybe just not the right conditions or I assumed too high a strike rate. Maybe just more seed next time with thinning out if necessary.
Runner beans cropping well, peas cropping for the last two weeks (not heaps of them), corn growing well, carrots still ticking along. Next year, I might leave patches of the vege garden with lots of oxalis without crops so I can progressively get rid of it - it's all through the peas and corn.
Worm bin is going well now. Just put the next layer on a few weeks ago, but made the mistake of putting a chicken carcass in there. Checked it yesterday and it's seething with maggots :-) Never mind, at least they're breaking it down. The worms seem to be migrating in there as well. I seem to get a few watering cans of rum every month as well. Next step is to get another worm bin for the oxalis and transfer some worms from the first bin. Might be able to become a worm supplier one day !
I need to actually prune the apples this winter, to get some decent shape into them. Might need to get Richard Bushell over for a bit of advice ...
Checked the broad beans in the freezer recently and a lot of them seem to have freezer burn. Maybe they ned to be blanched first.
Harvested most of the garlic yesterday. Tiny wee bulbs, but then the soil was pretty crap, the garlic were competing with the roses and got relatively little water. The soil was also very free draining so the little water I gave them probably didn't hang around for long. Still, should get a few meals of out what's there. I'll definitely plant more next year, in a much better spot.
I found some self-sown pumpkins and tomatoes and transplanted them to a patch around the side of the house a couple of months ago. They seem to all be flourishing even though there's not as much sun around there, and there's a few pumpkins growing. Interesting to see what happens.
The beefsteak tomatoes by the potatoes are starting to bear fruit, but I really need some lessons on how to handle them, i.e., nipping out the laterals and tying them up properly. Same for the other patch of cherry tomatoes. I think I'm missing out on a lot of production because they're not properly trained.
Well, disaster has struck ! It's decided to snow heavily today and the broad beans have been wiped out. I think everything else will be OK, though. They'll definitely have to go in much later next year and be much better supported. If they'd had better support they might have made it. And now it's around 11:15 am and I hear thunder and lightning, and the snow is turning to hail, adding insult to injury. Never mind, the damage is done now. Makes you think, though, about the need to diversify so that if any one crop fails you've got a number of others to fall back on.
Despite the snow, the broad beans have bounced back really well. I probably lost maybe half the crop, but I figure we'll still get aaround 4 kg of beans. Some figures: Average 4 beans per pod at avg 2 g per bean, maybe 30 plants in a 4 m2 area, maybe 40 pods per plant = 9.6 kg. So, if I lost half the crop I'd still have 4.8 kg of beans - pretty good result for a first time !
The strawberries are doing well, too. I think we've got 25 plants now (bought four more) and there seems to be an average 12 flowers on each plant = 300 berries ! Given that our berries are small and that there's around 20 berries in a normal punnet, that's still 15 punnets which is quite a few summer desserts.
Apples, red and blackcurrants are doing OK.
Potatoes are all up now - we have over 50 plants so that should be a fair feed of spuds. Should be enough to try keeping some as seed for next year. Some of the spuds we accidentally kept from last year had massive sprouts when I planted them maybe 6 weeks ago near the house, and they've come up well. With better storage we should easily be able to keep enough for next year - sustainability !
Tomatoes are in (6 beefsteak plants). They've got great sun and lots of compost, so should do well. They're rather close to some trees which is not so good, but regular feeding should compensate for that.
The root veges have been a bit of a failure because they went in a bit too early and just before the snow. Some carrots and onions have survived, but the parsnips and celery were a washout and I've dug them over - will need to fill in the onions and carrots and resow the others. We've got some peas and corn to go in that area, too, so that should be good.
I bought some worms for the worm farm, around 1500 for $25 from Bedrock Worms. The farm seems to be doing better now. There seems to be a lot of casts at the bottom of the tray and a fair bit of worm rum is coming off, but they don't seem to have really exploded in population. Maybe I'm just being impatient ...
Harvested some rhubarb the other day. Big stalks but a bit hollow in places - possibly lack of water. Tasted fine, though. I need to feed them up with compost and water them more regularly, probably.
Runner beans from last year are coming along well. The dwarf beans have been rather slow - only 3 up so far. The instructions did say they should be planted in summer, so I jumped the gun once again. Again the snow probably didn't help and I understand soil temperatures are a bit colder than normal for this time of year.
The herb seeds I scattered about under the redcurrant by the house have come to naught - I was just a bit too cocky :-) Will try again somewhere else when I've cleared some more ground, maybe where the rhodo by the crabapple is soon to be removed.
Still working on the composting set up - I'm in the process of building a 3 bay bin thing which should increase our capacity quite a bit. I don't think we'll ever be able to process everything here, but I'll give it a damn good try !
Just pulled out all the broad beans day before yesterday. I estimate there was around 3.5 kg of beans left, which means we probably got around 5 kg altogether. Not bad.
Peas have finished now. Didn't get much out of them (4 or 5 meals) but the strike rate was only about 60%.
Mesclun has done really well, will definitely do that again next year, much earlier in the season, too. And maybe around the side of the house, since they don't really need much sun.
Other late-planted things doing OK. Parsnip and leak strike-rate very low, will need to plant some more. You're not supposed to sow them past December, but it's worth a crack. Second lot of carrots doing well, and a few spring onions and coriander coming up. I might try some carrot and coriander soup again !
The runner beans have done well again, but the little dwarf beans were a bit of a waste of time. I definitely planted them too early, but I did replant some. Admittedly they've beena bit overshadowed by the rhubarb (which has done really well).
Got a few onions in the end - they were hard hit by the snow last year, hopefully better luck this year or maybe plant them slightly later ? Maybe check with Richard ...
Corn seems to be doing really well, even after it was battered by the NW winds of a couple of months ago. 16 plants, hopefully two ears off each plant = 30 ears. Most plants seem to have two ears, some have three, and some probably won't even produce so 30 ears would be pretty good.
The tomatoes have ripened very late this year, apart from the beefsteaks which are in a prime position (and I fed them some tomatoe food when I planted them - maybe helped?). The cherry tomatoes are just starting to ripen up now, so we should get quite a few over the next month.
Potatoes have done their dash, but we'll leave them in the ground for a while - I'm not sure when you're supposed to harvest them. I think you can leave them in the ground for quite a while, but they'll go funny eventually. We haven't bought potatoes for nearly a couple of months now, and I reckon we've probably got another 4-6 weeks worth left, and that's from 15m2, around 50 plants. So, we should be able to meet our potato needs from around 60m2. At a guess, if a serve of potatoes was about 10% of your daily energy requirements - if I needed 2700 calories/day, and there's around 75 calories in 100g of potatoes (probably a daily serving), then I'd need the equivalent of 36 servings of potatoes per day, for which I'd need around 2000m2 of land to provide. So, for the whole family, we'd need around 8000m2, or 2 acres, to feed ourselves. Food for thought ...
The pumpkins have exceeded expectations, because I thought they wouldn't produce anything at all ! There's 7 decent sized ones, so that'll be a few nice autumn meals.I harvested the garlic a week or so ago, and there's 16 very small bulbs. Given that the soil they were in was not good, and didn't get much water, they didn't do too badly.
Oops ! Missed a couple of months. Not much has happened in the last wee while, mostly just harvesting of corn over mid-March to mid-April. Probably got a dozen ears altogether, so not a great yield.
Also harvested all cherry tomatoes. Sadly, we chucked a few kilos out since they were ripening in the sun in my office but weren't very sweet as a result. Must plant fewer cherries and more soup, etc., varieties next year.
Got another 6 strawberry plants, so the patch is ever expanding - need to mulch it up for winter.
Got some logs in the end for the mushrooms - I need to wait to next weekend before putting the dowels in. Hopefully they haven't been waiting too long in the fridge - been in there a couple of months now.
We got 6 pumpkins at an average size of maybe 600 gms for a total of around 4 kg of pumpkin from about 4 square metres.
Got the usual massive crop of runner beans that noone likes, so cutting down on those a lot next year.
Just planted a couple of kiwifruit vines, one of each gender for pollination, and I need to build a frame for them to grow over. Should be interesting to see what we get off them next year.
The current composting arrangement seems to have the capacity to handle our needs now. Worm farms are kicking along nicely, too.
Just read Bill Mollisons book on permaculture and am determined to redesign the garden along these lines, using much less digging and more permanent cropping techniques.
Next year we're going to have a grape picking party for the neighbours, I've decided. Otherwise they just go to waste since not enough people like eating them here and there's not really a lot we can do with them. It'll be a good activity for the new neighbourhood group ...
Planted some lupins in the potato patch by the gate a couple of months back. They're about 15 cm high now. I'll probably dig them in around august to give them a month to rot before planting stuff in september-ish.
Potatoes from last season are still going strong, probably enough to take us another 2-3 months, which is much better than I'd hoped. Some of them are starting to sprout, which I think might be because they weren't in a cool enough place in the garage. The weather is getting colder now so sprouting should stop for a while.
Finally got my mushrooms sorted out a couple of months ago. Got three logs ( 2 x shitake, 1 x oyster ), gave one shitake to Josh as a control :-), and planted the other two in the corner by the kitchen. Should be cool and shady enough there, hopefully. They should start fruiting around September, I think.
I'm getting Carl Perkins (www.oneearthmatters.co.nz) in to look at redesigning our property along permaculture lines. I've removed the sandpit (since the kids don't use it any more) to expand the vege garden, but I figured it would be good to get the whole garden redesigned since it's starting to get developed higgledy piggledy. Should be an interesting exercise.
